Roger’s note: we hardly need the article I have posted below to remind us that in 1776 genocidal racism directed toward African slaves and First Nations peoples was alive and well. What I do think we need to be reminded of is how today’s orgiastic, exceptionalist, triumphalist (a la Joseph Goebbels) “celebrations,” along with the Trump phenomenon, are clear signs that things have not changed that much in 240 years.

Robert G. Parkinson, New York Times, July 4, 2016

Binghamton, N.Y. — FOR more than two centuries, we have been reading the Declaration of Independence wrong. Or rather, we’ve been celebrating the Declaration as people in the 19th and 20th centuries have told us we should, but not the Declaration as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams wrote it. To them, separation from Britain was as much, if not more, about racial fear and exclusion as it was about inalienable rights.

The Declaration’s beautiful preamble distracts us from the heart of the document, the 27 accusations against King George III over which its authors wrangled and debated, trying to get the wording just right. The very last one — the ultimate deal-breaker — was the most important for them, and it is for us: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” In the context of the 18th century, “domestic insurrections” refers to rebellious slaves. “Merciless Indian savages” doesn’t need much explanation.

In fact, Jefferson had originally included an extended attack on the king for forcing slavery upon unwitting colonists. Had it stood, it would have been the patriots’ most powerful critique of slavery. The Continental Congress cut out all references to slavery as “piratical warfare” and an “assemblage of horrors,” and left only the sentiment that King George was “now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us.” The Declaration could have been what we yearn for it to be, a statement of universal rights, but it wasn’t. What became the official version was one marked by division.

Upon hearing the news that the Congress had just declared American independence, a group of people gathered in the tiny village of Huntington, N.Y., to observe the occasion by creating an effigy of King George. But before torching the tyrant, the Long Islanders did something odd, at least to us. According to a report in a New York City newspaper, first they blackened his face, and then, alongside his wooden crown, they stuck his head “full of feathers” like “savages,” wrapped his body in the Union Jack, lined it with gunpowder and then set it ablaze.

The 27th and final grievance was at the Declaration’s heart (and on Long Islanders’ minds) because in the 15 months between the Battles of Lexington and Concord and independence, reports about the role African-Americans and Indians would play in the coming conflict was the most widely discussed news. And British officials all over North America did seek the aid of slaves and Indians to quell the rebellion.

A few months before Jefferson wrote the Declaration, the Continental Congress received a letter from an army commander that contained a shocking revelation: Two British officials, Guy Carleton and Guy Johnson, had gathered a number of Indians and begged them to “feast on a Bostonian and drink his blood.” Seizing this as proof that the British were utterly despicable, Congress ordered this letter printed in newspapers from Massachusetts to Virginia.

At the same time, patriot leaders had publicized so many notices attacking the November 1775 emancipation proclamation by the governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, that, by year’s end, a Philadelphia newspaper reported a striking encounter on that city’s streets. A white woman was appalled when an African-American man refused to make way for her on the sidewalk, to which he responded, “Stay, you damned white bitch, till Lord Dunmore and his black regiment come, and then we will see who is to take the wall.”

His expectation, that redemption day was imminent, shows how much those sponsored newspaper articles had soaked into everyday conversation. Adams, Franklin and Jefferson were essential in broadcasting these accounts as loudly as they could. They highlighted any efforts of British agents like Dunmore, Carleton and Johnson to involve African-Americans and Indians in defeating the Revolution.

Even though the black Philadelphian saw this as wonderful news, the founders intended those stories to stoke American outrage. It was a very rare week in 1775 and 1776 in which Americans would open their local paper without reading at least one article about British officials “whispering” to Indians or “tampering” with slave plantations.

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So when the crowd in Huntington blackened the effigy’s face and stuffed its head with feathers before setting it on fire, they were indeed celebrating an independent America, but one defined by racial fear and exclusion. Their burning of the king and his enslaved and native supporters together signified the opposite of what we think of as America. The effigy represented a collection of enemies who were all excluded from the republic born on July 4, 1776.

This idea — that some people belong as proper Americans and others do not — has marked American history ever since. We like to excuse the founders from this, to give them a pass. After all, there is that bit about everyone being “created equal” in this, the most important text of American history and identity. And George Washington’s army was the most racially integrated army the United States would field until Vietnam, much to Washington’s chagrin.

But you wouldn’t know that from reading the newspapers. All the African-Americans and Indians who supported the revolution — and lots did — were no match against the idea that they were all “merciless savages” and “domestic insurrectionists.” Like the people of Huntington, Americans since 1776 have operated time and time again on the assumption that blacks and Indians don’t belong in this republic. This notion comes from the very founders we revere this weekend. It haunts us still.

Robert G. Parkinson, an assistant professor of history at Binghamton University, is the author of “The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution.”

Roger’s note: for the most part the living conditions for Canada’s First Nations Peoples are a disgrace, characterized by high degrees of poverty, sickness, alcoholism and violence (primarily against women). Do not look for truth much less reconciliation from Canada’s current hateful Tory government.

The word “cultural” seems to suggest that the residential school system was designed to destroy cultures but not people, a fact far from reality.

HO / Canadian Press

A classroom of St. Joseph’s Residential School in Cross Lake, Man., in 1951. Residential Schools were predicated on the notion that Indigenous children were less human than other children, writes Jesse Staniforth.

By:Jesse Staniforth Published on Wed Jun 10 2015, Toronto Star

Perhaps the most controversial issue to follow the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been the affirmation that the government of Canada had committed “cultural genocide” against Indigenous people through the Indian Residential Schools (IRS) system.

The word “cultural” seems to suggest that the IRS system was designed to destroy cultures but not people, a fact far from the reality of Residential Schools. “Cultural” is a civilizing adjective: it says that our policies were not truly evil, just deeply misguided.

Already this strangely diplomatic term has been a flashpoint among people unwilling to admit that our country committed any kind of genocide, even one eased by a reductive adjective. Our history must make these critics uneasy. The IRS system, though its mandate did not include deliberately killing members of Canada’s Indigenous populations, was active in the following crimes, each of which constitutes genocide under the UN’s convention on Genocide (1948):

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Canada did not pack Indigenous people onto train cars and send them to be gassed, or march them into fields and execute them with machine-gun fire. However, our country committed not “cultural” genocide, but just regular genocide.

We forcibly took children from families — sometimes at gunpoint — and flew them to remote locations they could not escape — sometimes in tiny handcuffs — where they were submitted to a program of forced labour and “education” designed to destroy their cultures and civilizations. This desire to destroy cultures seems to be the reasoning for various public figures’ use of the adjective “cultural” before genocide. The other reason, I presume, is that some cling tightly — and childishly — to the idea that Canada has always been on the side of goodness and justice, and they find it very hard to accept, admit, and announce that we are a country that committed a program of genocide that lasted for many decades.

Yet Residential Schools were predicated on the notion that Indigenous children were less human than other children, so they were worked like animals in the slave labour many schools mandated. For the same assumption of their lesser humanity, children in the IRS system were often deliberately malnourished and kept in cramped, filthy quarters. When they subsequently fell sick as a result of this racially motivated neglect and mistreatment, they were not provided adequate medical treatment and died by the thousands.

The Canadian government was happy to leave these children to die because they were Indigenous. In the early part of the century we stopped keeping track of how many children died: the commission concluded this was because it made us look bad as a country. We did not change any of the conditions — we just changed the habit of keeping track of the children our system killed. And when Indigenous children died, we often did not consider them human enough to inform their families, to record their genders or their ages or the causes of their deaths, or to mark their graves.

Which part of this sounds civilized enough that it deserves to be mitigated by the adjective “cultural”? I’m not talking about the sexual violence. That was closely connected but it wasn’t part of our state policy. The rest was, and it constituted a policy of genocide.

As a Canadian journalist working in Indigenous media, I have faced the fact that the history of this country is difficult and tragic. My great-grandfather was decorated for valour at Vimy Ridge at the same time as Aboriginal children were being taken at gunpoint to have their culture beaten and starved out of them. National histories are too big and complex to love simply.

I’m not so attached to my country to contort myself into defending our history of genocide — and I’d like to ask those who are: how would admitting that our country was guilty of this crime against humanity change your relation to this nation, to yourself, and to Indigenous people?

As of the closing of the TRC, the facts of the Canadian genocide of Indigenous peoples are now a part of the official record of this country’s history, both for those who wish to face it, and those who wish to pretend it isn’t there. These facts stand and will not change, because they are in the past. In the present day, it is only Canadians who can change — and will have to change — in order to acknowledge the disgraceful but fixed facts of our history.

Jesse Staniforth is a Montreal-based freelance journalist and a regular contributor to the Nation magazine, serving the Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee and the communities around James Bay.

Roger’s note: I am no great fan of the Roman Catholic Church, past, present, and (presumably) future, albeit I acknowledge that there have been and are some notable exceptions to the murderous conservative institutional church: the Maryknolls, Bishop Romero, worker priests, etc. Nonetheless, the genocidal crimes of the church, particularly in the third world, are as impossible to reconcile with the philosophy of the biblical Jesus as they are to forgive.

I first became aware of the notorious Requerimiento reading James Michner’s novel on the history of Texas, where it was used against the southwest indigenous tribes. As a marriage of hypocrisy with homicide the concept knows no equal. If genuine decent Roman Catholic members can reconcile these acts with their faith, so be it. As for me, we have enough contemporary examples of the Church’s ethical putrefaction — from the tacit support of Hitler’s Nazis to the thousands of women condemned to botched abortions — there remains ample evidence of its moral decadence.

The following is from Eduardo Galeano’s notes on Haiti:

Three years after the discovery, Columbus personally directed the military campaign against the natives of Haiti, which he called Española.

A handful of cavalry, 200 foot soldiers, and a few specially trained dogs decimated the Indians. More than 500, shipped to Spain, were sold as slaves in Seville and died miserably. Some theologians protested and the enslavement of Indians was formally banned at the beginning of the 16th century.

Actually it was not banned but blessed: before each military action the captains of the conquest were required to read to the Indians, without an interpreter but before a notary public, a long and rhetorical Requerimiento exhorting them to adopt the holy Catholic faith: “If you do not, or if you maliciously delay in so doing, I certify that with God’s help I will advance powerfully against you and make war on you wherever and however I am able, and will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their majesties and take your women and children to be slaves, and as such I will sell and dispose of them as their majesties may order, and I will take your possessions and do you all the harm and damage that I can.”

Roger’s note: Today marks the 124th anniversary of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, which was followed decades later by the 71 day occupation in 1973, led by the radical American Indian Movement (AIM). It serves as a reminder that the American nation was born in genocide and to this day the First Nations Peoples of North America live in a shamefully degraded state. Dee Brown’s history is must reading to understand how we got to where we are today. It may seem like ancient history, but it is still living history to Native Americans, and it will be until justice is accomplished.

WINDOW ROCK – To the rebuilt 7th Cavalry, what happened at Wounded Knee 115 years ago today was a great victory; with 20 of the soldiers winning Congressional Medals of Honor for their “heroic” deeds that bloody day.

The chain of events that led to the massacre began earlier that year, when a Paiute prophet named Wovoka predicted the coming of The Messiah to restore the Indians’ place in the world. It was a crude combination of Paiute religion and Christianity.

To entice The Messiah to appear, the Lakota Indians began to perform the Ghost Dance. It quickly built to a frenzy.

Settlers feared another Indian war and soldiers were sent to stop it. It was decided to arrest Sitting Bull who did not practice the Ghost Dance; but did nothing to thwart its popularity.

The aging chief was confronted by Indian policeman, backed by soldiers. Shots rang out suddenly and the unarmed chief was killed.

The soldiers retreated to their fort; the Sioux feared more soldiers were coming to kill them all. Chief Big Foot fled the reservation. Cavalry reinforcements arrived and encircled the fleeing Indians. As it was near dark, the troops the 7th Cavalry surrounded the Indians and waited for morning.

A gray, frigid morning came and the Indians found themselves surrounded by soldiers and Gatling guns.

The commanding officer told the Sioux to surrender their weapons. A deaf Indian was confused when a nearby soldier tried to yank his rifle away; the Indian tugged back and the gun went off, harmlessly into the air.

The soldiers opened fire on mostly unarmed elderly Indians, and women and children. When the firing halted, approximately 300 defenseless Sioux had been butchered.

Most of the wounded soldiers were the victims of friendly fire, since they had formed a circle around the Indians and were then struck by their own comrades.

It was too cold to bury the dead, so the soldiers took their captives and herded them into the closest building where they could be guarded. The building was a church, still decorated with a Christmas banner reading “Peace on earth, Good Will to Men.”

Another Version of the Wounded Knee Massacre

Faced with the threat of starvation, the Ghost Dancers began to return to their agencies in late December. Chief Spotted Elk’s band was now made up of nearly 400 cold and hungry people. Nearby, troops of the Seventh Calvary found some of the Ghost Dancers and escorted them to Wounded Knee Creek to spend the night. The night before the ‘Wounded Knee Massacre’, Colonel James Forsyth had arrived at Wounded Knee Creek, and had ordered his men to place four Hotchkiss cannons in position around the area in which the Indians had been forced to camp. Despite their cooperation, the Indians were disarmed in the morning. They were surrounded by 500 U.S. soldiers, and had no choice but to surrender their weapons. However, the soldiers met resistance from one, Black Coyote (a deaf man), who was hesitant to relinquish his gun. As they struggled to take it from him, the gun was accidentally fired and on December 29, 1890, what has become known as the ‘Wounded Knee Massacre’ took place. Following the firing of the first shot, many Indians retrieved their guns and began firing at the soldiers. While the soldiers fired back with cannons and explosives, the Indians attacked with knives and tomahawks, but their weapons were no match for the soldiers’ heavy artillery. The end result was the massacre of at least 150 Indian men, women and children, Spotted Elk being among one of the killed, as well as 25 officers dead and 40 wounded.

The accidental firing by the Native Americans is open to criticism. One account by Phillip Wells, a mixed-blood Sioux who was an interpreter for the Army, claims that the incident was started by a medicine man. A meeting took place on December 29, 1890 between Colonel Forsyth and Spotted Elk. At the meeting Colonel Forsyth demanded that the Native Americans turn over their weapons. Spotted Elk claimed that they had no weapons. At this point a medicine man commenced to perform the Ghost Dance, during which he encouraged the young warriors, saying that the soldier’s bullets would not harm them, and they would turn to dust. After the medicine man had completed his dance, a gun was discovered under a blanket of one of the Native Americans. The gun was confiscated by a cavalry sergeant. After Phillip Wells told the Indians that is was important that they be searched individually, five warriors cast off their blankets, revealing guns. One warrior fired his weapon into a group of soldiers who were told to return fire. The medicine man then proceeded to stab Phillip Wells, nearly slicing off his nose.

Following the Massacre that day, U.S. soldiers left the wounded Native Americans to die in a three day blizzard. They later hired civilians to remove the bodies and bury them in a mass grave:

“Then still frozen stiff, the bodies were dumped unceremoniously into the hole…”

It was said that some of the Americans stripped the corpses of their clothing and collected some of their personal items as mementos of the occasion. Following the burial, the Americans lined up and took their picture beside the mass grave and twenty medals of honor were later given to honor the U.S. soldiers who participated in the massacre.

In 1903, a monument was erected at the site of the mass grave by surviving relatives to honor the “many innocent women and children who knew no wrong…” who were killed in the massacre. Today, some family members are still seeking compensation from the U.S. government as heirs of the victims but they have been unsuccessful in receiving any monetary settlement so far.

Beginning in 1986, a group began the Big Foot Memorial Riders to continue to honor the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre, specifically Chief Spotted Elk. This ceremony has grown increasingly larger every year since then, and riders subject themselves to the cold weather, as well as the lack of food and water that their family members faced. They carry with them a white flag to symbolize their hope for world peace and to continue to honor and remember the victims so that they will not be forgotten.

The death of Russell Means serves as a reminder of the vision of the American Indian Movement.

Russell Means, right, beats the drum at a meeting of the Wounded Knee occupation on March 10, 1973. A photojournalist who managed to get inside the cordon made a series of images of the stand-off and negotiations. (Associated Press)

On February 27, 1973, a team of 200 Oglala Lakota (Sioux) activists and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized control of a tiny town with a loaded history — Wounded Knee, South Dakota. They arrived in town at night, in a caravan of cars and trucks, took the town’s residents hostage, and demanded that the U.S. government make good on treaties from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Within hours, police had surrounded Wounded Knee, forming a cordon to prevent protesters from exiting and sympathizers from entering. This marked the beginning of a 71-day siege and armed conflict.

Russell Means, one of AIM’s leaders, died yesterday. Means was a controversial figure within the movement and outside of it; as his New York Times obituary put it, “critics, including many Indians, called him a tireless self-promoter who capitalized on his angry-rebel notoriety.” After getting his start in activism in the 1970s, Means went on to run for the Libertarian presidential nomination in 1987, and for governor of New Mexico in 2002. He also acted in scores of films, most famously in a lead role in the 1992 version of The Last of the Mohicans.

For all the contradictions of his life, he was no less controversial than AIM itself. The Wounded Knee siege was both an inspiration to indigenous people and left-wing activists around the country and — according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which besieged the town along with FBI and National Guard — the longest-lasting “civil disorder” in 200 years of U.S. history. Two native activists lost their lives in the conflict, and a federal agent was shot and paralyzed. Like the Black Panthers or MEChA, AIM was a militant civil rights and identity movement that sprung from the political and social crisis of the late 1960s, but today it is more obscure than the latter two groups.

The Pine Ridge reservation, where Wounded Knee was located, had been in turmoil for years. To many in the area the siege was no surprise. The Oglala Lakota who lived on the reservation faced racism beyond its boundaries and a poorly managed tribal government within them. In particular, they sought the removal of tribal chairman Dick Wilson, whom many Oglala living on the reservation thought corrupt. Oglala Lakota interviewed by PBS for a documentary said Wilson seemed to favor mixed-race, assimilated Lakota like himself — and especially his own family members — over reservation residents with more traditional lifestyles. Efforts to remove Wilson by impeaching him had failed, and so Oglala Lakota tribal leaders turned to AIM for help in removing him by force. Their answer was to occupy Wounded Knee.

Occupiers escort negotiator Harlington Wood (background, in trenchcoat) into the captive town on March 13, in a government attempt to end the crisis. At the time, Wood was Assistant U.S. Attorney General. (Associated Press)

Federal marshals and National Guard traded heavy fire daily with the native activists. To break the siege, they cut off electricity and water to the town, and attempted to prevent food and ammunition from being passed to the occupiers. Bill Zimmerman, a sympathetic activist and pilot from Boston, agreed to carry out a 2,000-pound food drop on the 50th day of the siege. When the occupiers ran out of the buildings where they had been sheltering to grab the supplies, agents opened fire on them. The first member of the occupation to die, a Cherokee, was shot by a bullet that flew through the wall of a church.

To many observers, the standoff resembled the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 itself — when a U.S. cavalry detachment slaughtered a group of Lakota warriors who refused to disarm. Some of the protesters also had a more current conflict in mind. As one former member of AIM told PBS, “They were shooting machine gun fire at us, tracers coming at us at nighttime just like a war zone. We had some Vietnam vets with us, and they said, ‘Man, this is just like Vietnam.’ ”

When PBS interviewed federal officials later, they said that the first death in the conflict inspired them to work harder to bring it to a close. For the Oglala Lakota, the death of tribe member Buddy Lamont on April 26 was the critical moment. While members of AIM fought to keep the occupation going, the Oglala overruled them, and, from that point, negotiations between federal officials and the protesters began in earnest. The militants officially surrendered on May 8, and a number of members of AIM managed to escape the town before being arrested. (Those who were arrested, including Means, were almost all acquitted because key evidence was mishandled.)

Even after the siege officially ended, a quiet war between Dick Wilson and the traditional, pro-AIM faction of Oglala Lakota continued on the reservation — this despite Wilson’s re-election to the tribal presidency in 1974. In the three years following the stand-off, Pine Ridge had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. Two FBI agents were among the dead. The Oglala blamed the federal government for failing to remove Wilson as tribal chairman; the U.S. retorted that it would be illegal for them to do so, somewhat ironically citing reasons of tribal self-determination.

Means announces AIM’s settlement with the U.S. government as negotiator Ken Frizzell of the Department of Justice and Oglala Lakota chief Tom Bad Cobb look on. (Associated Press)

Today, the Pine Ridge reservation is the largest community in what may be the poorest county in the entire United States. (Per capita income in 2010 was lower in Shannon County, South Dakota, where Pine Ridge is located, than in any other U.S. county.) Reports have the adult unemployment rate on the reservation somewhere between 70 and 80 percent. AIM — and Means — drew a lot of attention to the treatment of indigenous people in the U.S. But perhaps more than any other civil rights movement, its work remains unfinished.

Roger’s note: This is direct action. These are people taking their destiny into their own hands, perhaps the government and oil monopolies have left them no alternative. I can foresee a violent and tragic confrontation. I am sure they are expecting in and are ready for it, perhaps ready to die protecting their land and people. A lesson to all of us.

With a newly elected Congress gearing up to pass Keystone, the inspiring story of the Unist’ot’en Camp, an indigenous resistance community established in northwest Canada to protect sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory and blockade up to 10 additional proposed pipelines aimed at expanding Alberta Tar Sands operations. The Uni’stot’en Clan, which has families living in cabins and traditional structures in the direct pathway of the Northern Gateway and Pacific Trails fracking lines, argues that “since time immemorial” they have governed Wet’suwet’en lands, which thus remain unceded and not subject to Canadian law “or other impositions of colonial occupation” – an argument that has been sustained in court cases, and bolstered by the camp’s recent peaceable ejection of a drilling crew..

Camp leaders note that delays caused by their and other grassroots blockades are said to be costing Kinder Morgan and other companies up to $88 million a month, one reason the companies have filed multi-million suits against camp leaders that are still pending. But with Wet’suwet’en law requiring consent from the traditional indigenous governments in territories where indigenous people probably outnumber “settler people,” opponents appear to have the law on their side. “Our Chiefs have said no to these projects, and no means no,” says Freda Huson, Unist’ot’en Clan member and camp spokesperson. “You can’t continue to bulldoze over our people. Our lands. Our final say.”

First Nations and other British Columbia citizens promise direct actions, protests and legal battles to thwart Northern Gateway project

– Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Demonstrators took to the streets of Vancouver Tuesday evening after the Canadian government gave the greenlight to the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline. (Photo: Brent Patterson/ Twitter)

“It’s official. The war is on,” Grand Chief Stewart Phillip told a crowd of hundreds who had flooded the streets of Vancouver late Tuesday following the announcement that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had approved the Enbridge Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline.

Phillip, who is president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, told reporters that people are prepared to go to jail over this fight, “because that’s what it’s going to take.”

Phillip’s statement exemplified the widespread condemnation and vows of resistance that swiftly followed news that the Canadian government had greenlighted the controversial project.

The 1,177 kilometer pipeline will carry 200 million barrels of tar sands crude each year from Alberta to a terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, where it will be loaded onto oil tankers.

“The only thing we can do now is raise our voices together and have a peaceful protest, to make a strong statement that this is not okay,” Mona Woodward, executive director of the Aboriginal Front door society, told a reporter from the Vancouver Observer.

A diverse crowd gathered in front of the CBC News headquarters in the B.C. city to voice their anger at a government that they say blatantly chose to neglect the people and the environment over big business.

“It’s more than disrespectful […] it’s the end of safe drinking water, it’s also the end of Mother Earth,” Woodward continued.

Opponents of the pipeline also flooded social media with vows of resistance and pictures of Tuesday’s demonstration.

Canadian Indigenous groups, which have long-fought the pipeline, are vowing to defend their land and their sovereignty ‘without surrender.’

In an unprecedented show of unity, 31 First Nations and tribal councils have signed a letter announcing their intention to “vigorously pursue all lawful means to stop the Enbridge project.”

“We have governed our lands, in accordance to our Indigenous laws, since time immemorial,” read the statement, which was distributed by the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. “Our inherent Title and Rights and our legal authority over our respective territories have never been surrendered.”

“This project, and the federal process to approve it, violated our rights and our laws. We are uniting to defend our lands and waters of our respective territories,” the statement continued. “We will defend our territories whatever the costs may be.”

“We will defend our territories whatever the costs may be.”
—alliance of 31 First Nations

Even with the project tied up in courts, organizers are preparing more immediate direct actions and demonstrations on the ground.

On Wednesday, the First Nations group Kootenays for a Pipeline-Free B.C. is holding a rally under the banner “Occupy the Pipeline Everywhere!” at the Chahko Mika Mall in Ottawa.

Women with the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of six First Nations who live directly along the pipeline route, are vowing to “do everything we can to protect our water,” as alliance coordinator Geraldine Thomas Flurer toldThe Tyee.

Gitga’at First Nation women are planning to a suspend multicolored crocheted “chain of hope” across the more than 3.5 kilometer-wide Douglas Channel this Friday, in what they are describing as a symbolic blockade against oil tankers.

Echoing the sentiment of many who are specifically directing their anger over the pipeline at Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Chief Phillip said during the Vancouver rally: “Harper has declared war on British Columbians and First Nations, he will absolutely not be welcome into this province in the future.”

Considering the mounting opposition, many believe this is a project destined for failure. As noted Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki wrote following news of the pipeline’s approval, “This conversation is far from over.”

Suzuki added: “In approving it, the government is aggressively pushing an unwanted project on an unwilling public. I don’t believe it will be built.”

Our Fight Against the Northern Gateway Pipeline Has Just Begun

Like more than two-thirds of British Columbians and 130 First Nations, I’m outraged that the federal government wants to proceed with the Enbridge Northern Gateway twinned pipeline. In approving it, the government is aggressively pushing an unwanted project on an unwilling public. I don’t believe it will be built.

British Columbia and Canada have too much to lose: rich coastal ecosystems known as the Galapagos of the North, the vast Great Bear Rainforest, vibrant First Nations’ communities and some of the world’s last healthy salmon streams, among other treasures. B.C.’s communities are built on the understanding that healthy ecosystems lead to prosperity.

All this is at risk from a pipeline that will carry heavy oil across nearly 800 rivers and streams and onto supertankers travelling B.C.’s coastal waters. It’s hard to imagine a riskier project.

This is not the time to increase our reliance on dirty fossil fuels. Building the Northern Gateway pipeline is out of step with what an overwhelming body of scientific evidence is telling us: We need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades if we hope to guard against the worst impacts of climate change.

We can do better. The oil sands represent the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions in the country. Instead of supporting their unfettered expansion, we should be investing in a renewable-energy future that eliminates our dependence on fossil fuels. Building the Northern Gateway pipeline only ensures that emissions from the oil sands will continue to grow and Canada will again fail to be part of the solution to global warming.

I’m not giving up on a clean energy future for my children and grandchildren.

British Columbians say they don’t want this pipeline. Increased tanker traffic and the possibility of heavy oil spills threaten the same marine areas that the province, First Nations and local communities are working to protect through marine plans.

This conversation is far from over. Next steps will likely include court challenges and actions by Canadians and First Nations, whose concerns have so far been ignored. I urge you to remain hopeful and join me to make your voice heard for a responsible energy future.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

David Suzuki is a well-known Canadian scientist, broadcaster and environmental activist.

During this weekend’s highly anticipated NBA final, an ad that the NFL does not want to air will hit the airwaves. It is a powerful and moving plea to change the offensive Washington Redskins name and mascot produced by a group called the National Congress of American Indians.

It’s quite a long and enlightening list, accompanied by beautiful photographs, and its intent is clear. Redskins is a derogatory term that has no place in our national dialogue, or as the name of a football team. Will the NFL listen?

On March 29, a caravan of more than 100 cars plodded along the wide open roads of the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, stopped at a forlorn former corn field and prepared for battle.

Leaders from eight tribes in South Dakota and Minnesota pitched their flags. Participants erected nine tipis, a prayer lodge and a cook shack, surrounding their camp with a wall of 1,500-pound hay bales. Elders said they would camp out indefinitely. Speakers said they were willing to die for their cause.

This spirit camp at the Sicangu Lakota Rosebud reservation was the most visible recent action in Indian Country over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. But it was hardly the first … or the last.

On the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Debra White Plume, an activist and community organizer involved in Oglala Lakota cultural preservation for more than 40 years, has been leading marches, civil disobedience training camps and educational forums on the Keystone XL since the pipeline was proposed in 2008.

White Plume, founder of the activists groups Owe Aku (Bring Back the Way), the International Justice Project and Moccasins on the Ground, has crisscrossed the country, marched on Washington and testified at the United Nations against the environmental devastation of tar sands oil mining and transport. Now, perhaps only weeks before President Obama is set to announce whether to allow a private oil company, TransCanada, to plow through the heartland to transport tar sand crude from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries for export, White Plume is busier than ever.

White Plume is leading a galvanized, international coalition of grassroots environmental activists, the largest and most diverse in decades, in the last fight against the Keystone XL. The coalition is planning massive actions against the Keystone XL in Washington, D.C. and in local communities from April 22 (Earth Day) through April 27. In what is a first in decades, indigenous tribes from the heartland will be joined with farmers and ranchers along the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route in the actions. The “Cowboy and Indian Alliance” is inviting everyone in the country to their tipi camp on the National Mall in the hopes that a show of strength will steel President Obama’s resolve to be the “environmental President.”

Since the State Department implicitly signed off on the Keystone XL pipeline in February by announcing that its environmental impact statement had found no “significant” impacts to worry about, White Plume and other environmental leaders concerned about the Keystone XL’s impact on climate change have also stepped up their plans for direct, non-violence civil disobedience. Those plans are under wraps, but blockades will surely be a major weapon in their arsenal.

White Plume talked about why the Keystone XL pipeline has become such a firestorm.

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Evelyn Nieves: Why is it so important that the Keystone XL pipeline NOT become a reality?

Debra White Plume: The tar sands bitumen inside the KXL pipeline is hazardous, flammable, a carcinogen — and deadly. When it gets into our drinking water and surface water, it cannot be cleaned up. These pipelines further the development of the tar sands sacrifice area in Alberta.

EN: Who is involved in the activism surrounding the opposition to the pipeline? Stories talk about this as a women’s movement, an elders movement and a youth movement. That means it’s pretty much everyone’s movement except for middle-aged men.

DWP: That might be true elsewhere, but all of our people are engaged to protect sacred water. I can’t speak for any middle-aged American men, but I know there are hundreds of American ranchers and farmers in South Dakota and Nebraska ready to defend their rights. Our Lakota warriors are opposing the KXL — this includes men and women.

EN: What sorts of direct action are you willing to take and what kind of support are you receiving from Indian Country in general?

DWP: We will blockade TransCanada’s KXL to protect our lands and waters if we have to. Many tribal governments and Red Nations people have committed to blockade. Our Oglala Lakota Tribal Council is meeting soon to discuss declaring war on the KXL, as is the Rosebud Lakota Tribal Council.

EN:What kind of support are you receiving from outside of Indian Country?

DWP: We have support from all over the big land (so-called U.S.A.) and so-called Canada. We do not recognize these manmade borders. Our people were here from time immemorial, this is our ancestral land, people to the north and south are our relatives. We are connected through prophecy.

EN:Where is the state of South Dakota on this?

DWP: The South Dakota state government wants the pipeline, the state government is pro-mining. They see Mother Earth as a warehouse of resources they can extract. They have no respect. The citizens are divided. The ranchers and farmers along the corridor have had their lands taken by eminent domain in South Dakota. They don’t like that. We have made allies with the S.D. citizens who want to protect sacred water. Many have come to our Lakota ceremonies.

EN: What about non-Indian border towns?

DWP:People who live in the border towns are divided about the KXL. Some hope to get a job, some hope it never comes here, many are working in alliance with us to stop it.

EN: Why is the blockade at Rosebud?

DWP: The camp at Rosebud is not a blockade camp. The camp is on their own tribal land and no one can make them leave. It is near the location of a proposed man camp. We do not want any part of the KXL, including the badman camps.

EN:Is it because that’s the direct path on the pipeline route?

DWP: No, it is not in the KXL pipeline corridor. It is there because it is near to where TransCanada wants to put a badman camp. We refer to those camps as badman camps because of the horrendous experience the Mandan, Hidtatsa, and Arkikara Nation (in western North Dakota, where tracking reigns) is enduring because of the thousands of strangers among them, committing many crimes against women and children, and by the nature of their work, destroying Mother Earth for tar sands mining — which has to exit the sacrifice zone through the black snake of the KXL and other pipelines proposed by corporations.

EN: What are your next steps?

DWP: We continue to provide NVDA (non-violent direct action) training to communities in Indian Country that request for us to come. This is our Moccasins on the Ground Tour of Resistance that we have been doing for three years now.

EN: What do you hope to achieve with your large gathering later this month?

DWP: We will provide training to communities who are sending their people, increase opposition to the kxl, expand our network, strengthen alliances, teach people about the sacredness of water. Allies are coming from all over to help us train community people, and other folks who are coming from all over the big land. We have many more Moccasins on the Ground Tour of Resistance training camps scheduled. We will keep training until the decision is made. We hope President Obama will be green. Revolutionary green, and say no to the KXL and all other tar sands pipelines. Who wants to live over a snake pit?

Evelyn Nieves is a senior contributing writer and editor at AlterNet, living in San Francisco. She has been a reporter for both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Just in time for the Super Bowl, the National Congress of American Indians has releasedProud To Be, a powerful new ad that seeks to explain why the Washington Redskins name – which never gets mentioned – is a racist horror that needs to be changed. With a fascinating history of the word, from its reportedly “benign” origins to its use in 1860s bounty notices – “$200 for every red-skin sent to purgatory” – to the decades-long fight to change a name that ignorant rich people like owner Dan Snyder, all of whom should know better but somehow don’t, continue to insist is “a badge of honor.” Tell them it’s not. It’s time they join this century.

Grassy Narrows – Today the Wynne government approved plans for another decade of clearcut logging in Grassy Narrows Territory against the will of this Indigenous community. The decision has ruined Christmas in a community already struggling with the long term health impacts of mercury poisoning. The Whiskey Jack Forest Management Plan 2012-2022 plans for dozens of large clearcuts on Grassy Narrows Territory, some nearly the size of pre-amalgamation Toronto.

“Premier Wynne, it is within your power to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated at the expense of another generation of Grassy Narrows children,” said Grassy Narrows Chief Simon Fobister. “I call on you to intervene to repeal this hurtful plan and to ensure that never again will Ontario attempt to force decisions on our people and our lands.”

The plan sets out a schedule to clearcut much of what little mature forest remains on Grassy Narrows Territory after decades of large scale industrial logging. Clearcut logging elevates mercury levels in fish – deepening the tragedy caused when 20,000 lbs of mercury poison were dumped into Grassy Narrows’ river by a paper mill upstream in the 1960’s.

This logging will further erode the Aboriginal and Treaty Rights of the community which depends on the forest to sustain their families and to practice their culture through fishing, hunting, trapping, medicine harvesting, ceremony and healing for all generations.

“Ontario has ignored our voices, and has added insult to injury by delivering this bitter blow during Christmas,” said Joseph Fobister. “My heart sinks because I know that clearcut logging has devastating consequences for our people. We cannot allow this.”

Premier Wynne visited Grassy Narrows in the summer of 2012 as Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, saying that she wanted to rebuild Ontario’s relationship with Grassy Narrows to “get it right.” Instead Ontario has unilaterally pursued this clear-cut logging plan against the will of the community and without consent

We were not properly consulted and we do not accept any application of this plan to our traditional lands. The Chief and Council along with community Elders stand united on this issue and are determined to protect the community’s way of life; Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.

The Supreme Court of Canada will hear Grassy Narrows’ case against Ontario in May, with a decision following by six months or more. The legal action argues that Ontario does not have the right to unilaterally permit logging on Grassy Narrows land due to promises made by Canada in Treaty 3.
The new logging plan takes effect in April.

Grassy Narrows is the site of the longest running native logging blockade in Canadian history – an ongoing grassroots action which recently celebrated its 11th anniversary. Grassy Narrows youth, elders, women, and land-users put their bodies on the line to stop logging trucks from passing.